Category Archives: Thailand

Over the years, TTB has detailed on occasion the Jihadist insurgency in Thailand that the Western media has largely ignored.

Now that insurgency has a name associated with it: the Pattani Consultative Council, a coalition of 6 Jihadist organizations in southern Thailand. It comprises of the National Revolutionary Front, the Pattani Islamic Mujahiddeen Movement, the Islamic Liberation Front of Pattani and three factions from the Pattani United Liberation Organization.

All they want, they say, is an independent Islamic State in southern Thailand…They want to ensure Islamic laws and regulations are enforced.

The Council warned that there will be more violence until the right of self-determination for Muslims is guaranteed.

If you listen to some political pundits on both sides of the aisle, you might get the misimpression that Jihadists target America and America is viewed negatively in the Islamic world because of our support for Israel.

The problem with that line of thinking is that ignores some 1400 years of Islamic doctrine.

Each Jihadist terror organization around the globe has a specific goal in mind and that is the formation of an Islamic state ruled by Shariah.

This is very important to understand because this is a common goal of all the major Jihadist organizations across the world. It is shared by Al Qaeda, HAMAS, Lashkar e Taiba, Abu Sayyaf, Jemaah Islamiyah, Boko Haram, Al Shabaab and others and transcends any localized disagreements over borders and pure politics.

Israel could evaporate tomorrow and the overriding goal of the formation of Islamic states ruled by Shariah would not change a bit.

Those who blame Jihad on Israel need to ask themselves some important questions:

Did ISIS wage Jihad in Iraq and Syria to establish an Islamic state ruled by Shariah law because America supports Israel?

Did the Jihadist terrorist group Boko Haram in Nigeria kidnap 300 young girls this spring because America supports Israel?

Did the Taliban seize power in Afghanistan in 1996 to establish an Islamic state ruled by Shariah law because America supports Israel?

Did the Jihadist terrorist group Al Shabaab attack the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, in September 2013, killing 67 innocent civilians, because America supports Israel?

Did the Jihadist terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah bomb resorts in Bali, Indonesia in October 2002, killing 202 innocent civilians because America supports Israel?

Did Chechen Jihadist terrorists massacre 334 people, mostly school children, in Beslan, Russia, because the US supports Israel?

Did Jihadist terrorists with the group Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) detonate a bomb in Marrakesh, Morroco in April 2011, killing 17 innocent civilians, because America supports Israel.

Of course, the answer to each and every one of these questions is no and the questions and answers prove a point. Jihad is truly global. Tragically, it is one of the most successful “exports” in the world over the past decade.

None of the regions mentioned above have a thing to do with Israel. Most don’t have anything to do with America.

The doctrine behind global jihad is over a thousand years old. In other words, the jihadist doctrine has been around far longer than America has even been in existence.

The Jihadists are not motivated only by our actions. They don’t just react to what we do. They have their own reasons for waging violent Jihad which have nothing to do with America, Israel or anything that you or I have any control over.

The quicker our politicians—both Democrat and Republican—gain a full understanding of this, the better.

Anyone who doesn’t realize that Hezbollah is a Jihadist organization with global reach hasn’t been paying attention.

There are too many Americans in particular who have come to view Hezbollah as strictly an organization limited to operations in Lebanon.

That just isn’t true. In fact, there can be no doubt that Hezbollah has operatives here in America, perhaps many of them. And we know that Hezbollah has supporters, including financial supporters, here in the USA.

But the latest story involving a Jihadist plot by Hezbollah comes from Thailand, a popular tourist destination for Israelis and other Westerners–and a country that is contending with an Jihadist insurgency of its own.

Thai authorities arrested two Hezbollah members who evidently confessed to a bomb plot targeting Israeli tourists.

The two Jihadis were identified as Daoud Farhat, a French-Lebanese national, and Youssef Ayad, who is of Lebanese-Filipino extraction.

Farhat held a French passport and Ayad carried a Philippines passport. Their passports indicated that both were born in Lebanon, but it is not yet certain that the passports are genuine.

Farhat was in Thailand for the first time, but Ayad has visited Thailand 17 times.

Thai investigators believe at least nine suspected foreign terrorists connected to Hezbollah are somewhere in Thailand and that one other possible co-conspirator may have already fled Thailand. One of the other suspects is said to be named Bilal Bahsoun.

The overwhelming majority of Muslims do not commit acts of violent Jihad, but that does not mean that there isn’t a doctrinal basis for it in Islamic scripture.

I am not talking about just a few violent verses in the Quran. The Islamic trilogy is replete with it: the Quran, the Hadith and the Sirah. (The Hadith are traditions and stories of the life of Muhammed and the Sirah is the biography of Muhammed). Moreover, in the Quran, the principle of abrogation bestows the most violent verses with the greatest strength as compared to earlier, peaceful verses.

These are facts, and if you read what the Jihadis themselves talk to each other about, EVERYTHING they do is based on contemporary interpretation of Islamic scripture.

To assign these beliefs to EVERY SINGLE Muslim of the 1.2 billion Muslims on the planet is wrong. But to deny the doctrinal basis in Islam for all of this violent Jihad is just as wrong and it is preventing the West from coming to grips with the global war with which we are faced, whether we want to believe it or not. There is a reason why we see Islamic terrorist organizations as well as individual Jihadis waging violent Jihad in places as geographically diverse as Boston, Los Angeles, Fort Hood, Little Rock, New York, Washington, Buenos Aires, London, Amsterdam, Toulouse, Madrid, Moscow, Beslan, Marrakech, Algiers, Benghazi, Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Yaounde, Nairobi, Mogadishu, Timbuktu, Kaduna, Dar el Salam, Sana’a, Istanbul, Fallujah, Ramadi, Karachi, Islamabad, Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Mumbai, Amritsar, Dhaka, Hat Yai, Yala, Bali, and Mindanao.

In warfare, your enemy’s reality becomes your reality. To defeat him, you better understand him. You better understand his motivations and his goals. In short, you need to know what makes him tick. We understood what made the Nazis tick, we had Mein Kampf as a doctrinal guide. We understood what made the communists tick, we had The Communist Manifesto and other works as a doctrinal guide. But we REFUSE to even TRY to understand what makes the Jihadis tick because we fear that the reality will be too frightening. We are in willful denial: “The violence simply cannot have anything to do with Islam because there are too many peaceful Muslims in the world.”

That is missing the point entirely. The fact that the majority of Muslims do not know Islamic doctrine and thus do not adhere to it is not particularly remarkable or surprising. How many Catholics are truly highly familiar with the doctrinal aspects of their faith?

The fact remains that there are violent Jihadists around the world who commit acts of war and they both justify it on Islamic scripture and carry out these acts to promote Islam. The doctrinal basis is found in Islamic law, known as Shariah. The Jihadists’ goal is to impose Islamic law and Islamic law is the code which they follow. (If you are skeptical of this, go pick up a copy of the excellent work by Raymond Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader, and read what the enemy writes and says.) To deny the doctrinal basis in Islam for violent Jihad is becoming more and more suicidal as a civilization with each new incident that we in turn deny.

The latest example is of course in Boston. Two Jihadis, perhaps members of a Jihadist organization, or perhaps so-called “lone wolf” actors, committed atrocious acts of violent Jihad, killing several innocents and wounding many more. Despite evidence on social media and YouTube, as well as accounts of the Jihadis’ devout Islamic beliefs, the simpletons in the news media and even in our own government are pondering aloud what their motivation could possibly have been. Hours and hours of TV coverage in the so-called “mainstream” media go by with nary a mention of the word “Islam.” The elephant in the room is being ignored.

Some “experts” are quoted as taking comfort in the belief that the two Tsarnaev brothers may not have had any operational connection with any known terrorist organization, such as Al Qaeda. This is 180 degrees out from reality and these “experts” completely miss the point.

The fact that the Tsarnaev brothers may have “only” been inspired to commit Jihad on their own is not cause for celebration or relaxation. It is cause for alarm and it would seem to be part of a disturbing pattern that has been emerging over the years:

• Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, aka Carlos Bledsoe, apparently acting on his own after receiving terrorist training in Yemen, shot two US Army soldiers outside a Little Rock, Arkansas recruiting office, killing one, Private William Long and wounding another.

• Major Nidal Malik Hasan, apparently acting on his own, after years of conversing with Al Qaeda Imam Anwar Al Awlaki, shot and killed 13 fellow US Army soldiers and wounded 39 more.

These types of attacks are indicative of a revolutionary critical mass in which centralized direction and control is no longer necessary. Jihadis around the world are now waging violent Jihad in Al Qaeda-like fashion after reading web postings and listening to sermons. This presents a whole new series of challenges for security services and makes the use of military force much less effective. Infiltrating organizations such as Al Qaeda and Hezbollah has been extremely difficult. But how does one infiltrate lone wolf actors like the Tsarnaev brothers? Who does the US military go after in the wake of the Boston attacks?

This new reality makes identifying and understanding the Islamic doctrinal basis of our Jihadist enemies all the more important, yet with each passing attack, we seem to be getting further and further away from doing so.

Some 5,000 people have been killed in that conflict since 2004. The aim of the Jihadists is largely the same as that of Jihadist insurgents everywhere: the establishment of an Islamic state ruled by Shariah law.

Before we weigh in on the latest atrocity committed by the Jihadists in southern Thailand, new readers can familiarize themselves with the conflict by checking out the numerous posts we’ve dedicated to this theater in the global Islamic insurgency:

The Jihad in southern Thailand took a major turn for the worse overnight when the Jihadists detonated 3 car bombs and 1 motorcycle bomb, killing 14 and wounding 340.

The number of killed and wounded have climbed throughout the day since the initial reports came in this morning.

The AP first reported 8 dead and 68 wounded. A couple of hours later CNN reported 10 dead and 100 wounded. Then the AP reported 14 dead and 340 wounded. This indicates that Western news agencies have no one near the scene and are dependent on reports from stringers and local news agencies.

That is rather typical of the coverage of this conflict has received all along. No one has really paid attention. The so-called mainstream media has largely ignored the conflict and wants to believe that all such conflicts are strictly born of local issues. The idea of a global Islamic insurgency goes squarely against the narrative that the media rolls out on such conflicts as the ones raging in Thailand, the Philippines, Somalia, Nigeria and elsewhere.

At any rate, this latest series of bomb attacks represents a serious escalation of the violence. This is by far the largest casualty count for an attack by the Jihadists in Thailand and the attack is by far the most planned out and orchestrated.

This could very well indicate the infusion of foreign funding, know-how, training or even Jihadis into southern Thailand.

Sites of terrorist attacks in Southern Thailand

The bombs were detonated in shopping and dining areas frequented by tourists in Yala city. The first bomb was followed by a detonation designed to inflict casualties on samaritans, onlookers and first responders at the same site. This is a common tactic used by Jihadists around the globe. By taking out first responders, any subsequent blast makes authorities appear incompetent or helpless to protect or render aid to victims.

Scene of car bomb attack in Yala City, Thailand

Another image of the Yala City car bomb attack

Sure enough, while the media was still reporting on the “twin blasts” in Thailand, a third blast occurred in the basement parking lot of a high-rise hotel (the Lee Gardens Plaza Hotel) in the nearby city of Hat Yai. At about the same time, a motorcycle bomb was detonated wounding a police officer.

Cell phone camera image of bombing of Lee Gardens Plaza Hotel in Hat Yai, Thailand. The hotel is the tallest building in the area, seen at far left.

Smoke victims at scene of Lee Gardens Plaza Hotel bombing in Thailand

This was clearly a coordinated, planned assault designed to instill fear in the population, make the Jihadis appear more formidable than they have been seen previously and cause chaos.

It is also probable that the attack failed in an apparent key goal. The fact that a car bomb was detonated in the basement of a high rise building is very reminiscent of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. That attack was designed to bring the twin towers down and most of the casualties it ended up causing were due to smoke inhalation. The same is evidently true of this attack in Thailand.

It is almost certain that the Jihadis meant to bring that building in Thailand down.

This was meant to be Thailand’s September 11th: a coordinated series of attacks with massive casualties. It is tragic that innocent people lost their lives and were injured, but it is likely that the attacks fell short of their goals and caused fewer casualties than they were intended to inflict.

In the early days of this blog, that article was one of our most popular, perhaps because most folks had no idea that thousands of people had been killed since 2004 in an Islamic insurgency in southern Thailand.

Here we are over two and a half years later and the insurgency in Thailand is still going on. In fact, it’s getting worse. The Thais seem to be trying the same strategy and tactics that have failed elsewhere in the world: appeasement, accommodation and throwing money at the problem after blaming the violence on a bad economy.

The Jihadis are getting more sophisticated. They are making greater use of powerful IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). This is no coincidence. The terrorists didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to put bombs under and alongside roads. Someone is training them. And if the region is so impoverished, then someone is funding them. Obviously, it follows that someone is providing training as well. All of this after indoctrination in mosques. Thai authorities deny these realities at their peril.

For more background on this, check out our previous posts on the war in southern Thailand…

Particularly note this quote from one of our previous posts:

Note that the Thai Jihadists have never made any public statements since the violence started back in 2004. 4,000 people have been killed in the insurgency, but no demands have been issued and no goals announced. This is classic Jihadist warfare. They are not fighting because they want something from the non-Muslims or the government. They are fighting a war of elimination…

Now compare that to this passage from an article published this week by the Christian Science Monitor:

Among the detainees at the army base was a 30-something Muslim man who gave his name as Amatsydee. Sitting on a bed in his cell, he patiently explained, in passable Thai, that he had been detained because the authorities accuse him of assisting a “group of bad people.”

Asked about the reason for insurgent attacks in the region, “I don’t know how to say it,” he said, looking up at a burly guard standing beside him. “My Thai isn’t very good.”

Anyone else see a pattern here?

Here is the update on the violence in Thailand from the Christian Science Monitor in an article entitled “Muslim insurgency in Thailand’s restive south heats up.”

Many people around the world are unaware of the war that has been raging in the Philippines. At the heart of the violence is the desire of Jihadist terrorist groups such as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah to establish an independent Islamic state ruled by Shariah law on the island of Mindanao.

Along with the Islamic insurgency in southern Thailand, these Asia-Pacific Jihads illustrate the global war we find ourselves in. They also debunk the theory that US foreign policy, presence in the Middle East or support for Israel is the primary reason for Islamic terrorism.

No one can say that the Jihadists are killing innocent civilians in Thailand and the Philippines because the US supports Israel or because the US has troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Wikileaks documents have given us a clear view into just how serious the situation on the Philippines is, as well as the character of the global Islamic threat we face.

• US diplomats characterized the Jihadist terrorism on Mindanao as on a par with the insurgency in Afghanistan.

• US diplomats openly acknowledged in the secret cables leaked by Wikileaks the role Saudi Arabia was playing in funding the Islamic groups in the Philippines and declared that it must be stopped. This is a common theme around the world. Saudis fund Jihad with “private” donations (often from members of the royal family) while the Saudi government looks the other way and denies any support for terrorism. It’s called plausible deniability and the Saudis have been playing this double game for over 30 years. They fund Jihadist terrorism and claim they are our “allies” in the “war on terrorism.”

But let’s not get to worked up about the crazy old loon. After all, he’ll be 76 in August. That will make him 77 by the time the next president is inaugurated. That’s nearly the age President Reagan was when he left office after two terms.

Ron Paul isn’t in this race to win. He’s one of those perpetual candidates for president who just adores the attention.

In his latest appearance on Fox News, Paul manages to stick to his McGovern-like “Blame America First” script with the tired old assumption that Jihad is being waged against us just because we are in Saudi Arabia, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or especially because we are an ally of Israel. Paul appears to be a disciple of Michael Schuerer, who has been spouting that line since BEFORE he left the CIA.

It is interesting that Ron Paul bases his entire philosophy on the global Islamic insurgency on the opinions of Michael Sheuer. Michael Sheuer epitomizes all that is wrong with America’s bureaucratized counterterrorism apparatus. First of all, he broke longstanding CIA regulations at the encouragement of his politicized superiors to write a book while in active service. This alone makes him a scumbag in my book. Thousands of honorable CIA operators could have done the same, but none did. There is a reason. It’s called honor. Second, Sheuer had a uniquely disturbing career in the CIA. A career analyst with no field experience, he was somehow allowed to become a case officer and eventually found himself in charge of the CIA unit tasked with killing or capturing Bin Laden. He failed miserably. Moreover, if you actually read his work, it is readily apparent that Sheuer has at best a superficial level of knowledge of Islamic threat doctrine. He is appallingly ignorant for someone who was in the position he was in. This has resulted in his belief that we are only being attacked because of things we have done and especially for our support for Israel.

I ask my friends:

Is Jemmaah Islamiya attempting to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia because the US supports Israel?

Are the Chechyan jihadists waging Jihad against Russia because the US supports Israel?

Is Abu Sayyef attempting to establish an Islamic state on Mindanao because the US supports Israel?

Are Jihadists attempting to establish an Islamic state in southern Thailand because the US supports Israel?

Have Nigerian Jihadists attacked innocent Christians repeatedly because the US supports Israel?

Is Al Shabaad conducting terrorist attacks in Kenya and Somalia on innocent civilians because the US supports Israel?

Are Jihadists attempting to create an Islamic state in India’s Kashmir because the US supports Israel?

Have Jihadists killed thousands in attacks on innocent civilians in Morocco, Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, the UK, Spain, Jordan and Bangladesh because the US supports Israel?

Are young Jihadis rioting in France because the US supports Israel?

Why is all this happening? Could it be that there is something more to this global violence than the simple “blame America first” concept that Ron Paul supposes?

According to the Lebanese news website, the Beirut Observer, the Jihadist terrorist organization Hezbollah is planning to attack Western targets. The site based its report on information obtained by a “Western intelligence agency” that intercepted message traffic to that effect.

The Observer reported that unnamed Western intelligence officials think that Hezbollah plans to attack Western targets, based on unusual movement of suspected Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards operatives.

The article claimed that the goal of the attack would be to distract global public opinion from indictments expected to be handed down by a special UN tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Rafik Hariri

It has been widely speculated that the UN tribunal will accuse Hezbollah members of involvement in the huge bomb attack on Hariri’s motorcade.

According to the Israeli news site Haaretz, earlier this week Israel’s counter terrorism bureau issued a warning that terrorists intended to carry out attacks against Israelis and Jewish targets abroad, specifying India, Thailand, Greece and Turkey as areas where an attack could take place. It is not known if the Israeli bulletin is related to the report on Hezbollah from the Beirut Observer.

Al Qaeda is known to be active in Turkey, where anti-Israeli sentiment has been on the rise for some time as Islamists expand and consolidate their political power. In addition to Hezbollah, Al Qaeda or other Turkish Jihadist groups could be motivated to attack Israeli or Jewish targets in Turkey.

Of course, India has been inflicted with a virtual menagerie of Jihadist terrorist groups, both domestic and from neighboring Pakistan. Lashkar-e-Taiba pulled off the spectacular Mumbai attacks targeting Jewish targets, but it is far from the only group operating in India, any of which could be prompted to attack Israeli or Jewish targets in India, either of their own volition or in the service of allied organizations.

Thailand has been wracked by a Jihadist insurgency for years in its southern regions. The Thai Jihadists are somewhat of an enigma and their ties to other Jihadist groups are unclear, but Thailand is an enormously popular tourist destination for Israeli and European tourists.

There is known to be Al Qaeda activity in Greece and Al Qaeda operatives have been apprehended there.

What all this adds up to is we could be talking about one threat or two distinct threats, one reported by the Beirut Observer from Hezbollah and another from Israeli authorities from unnamed terrorists in the four nations mentioned.

The possibility of Hezbollah launching attacks against the West in either Europe or the US has long been a deep concern for national security and counterterrorism practitioners. Hezbollah has been in existence for a decade longer than Al Qaeda and has been amply funded and equipped by Iran. Hezbollah is a much larger organization than Al Qaeda and is known to have cells, operatives and sympathizers spread throughout the world, including Asia, Europe and North and South America. Hezbollah has been referred to as the “A” team of Jihadist terrorism and Al Qaeda the “B” team. In fact Hezbollah trained Al Qaeda terrorists in Sudan during the 1990s.

Hezbollah is uniquely qualified to carry out terrorist attacks in the West. Such an attack would certainly not be unprecedented.

Hezbollah is believed to have carried out two bomb attacks in Argentina against the Israeli embassy in 1992 and at a Jewish Community Center in 1994. More than 120 innocent civilians were killed in those attacks. The attacks are also believed to have been carried out with Iranian support.

An example of suspicious Iranian activity in support of possible terrorist strikes occurred in New York back from 2002 to 2006 when members of the Iranian UN mission were repeatedly caught by the NYPD for conducting obvious reconnaissance of New York landmarks and subways.

We can be sure that, when and if Hezbollah or Iran decide to strike in the West, the targets were already selected and prepped by operatives in place long before the attack occurs.